Before Han Solo. Before Lieutenant Starbuck, Captain Kirk and Flash Gordon. Even before Buck Rogers there was John Carter of Mars; the Warlord of Barsoom, the unparalleled swordsman and the Original Gangsta of intergalactic adventurers and alien assbeaters.

John Carter is the hero of a series of early twentieth century novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs and owner of a Class-A Asskicker License. A Confederate cavalry officer turned frontiersman cowboy, Carter one day finds himself somehow inexplicably teleported to the planet Mars, where he wastes no time in beating the shit out of every alien he meets, scoring with the hottest babe on the planet and making himself Emperor of Mars.

First off, the first novel in the series (A Princess of Mars) was originally written in 1911, back when men wanted their men to be MEN and not sniveling coward pussies who did lame shit like cry about their feelings and not punch people in the face. And Carter is no exception. As soon as he lands on Mars he realizes that everyone there is a weakling because they have shitty gravity there and Earth gravity rules so he just runs around punching alien monsters in the face and jumping on top of buildings and doing kickass awesome shit like eating plants. Eventually the nine foot-tall green alien creatures he meets up with decide he's so badass that he should fight one of their chiefs, and of course Carter kills the stupid bastard by stabbing him in the heart about a thousand times and takes over as a lesser chief of the tribe.

One day some stupid assholes show up in their flying airships and get their shit wrecked by the green men that John Carter is chilling with. Well in the wreckage of the airships the green dudes capture a total alien mega-babe from a crazy race of Martians that look exactly like regular humans only their skin is a little redder and they don't wear much in the way of clothing. Well John Carter is like, "well fuck these guys, I'm going to help this hot naked alien space babe escape", and so they get the fuck out of Dodge and try to bring her back to the city-state she's the Princess of.

The rest of the story basically involves a series of crazy fucking adventures where John Carter ends up traveling throughout the entire face of Mars trying to rescue this chick, who is continually getting captured and transported to various locations. Along the way, John Carter battles crazy alien civilizations, obliterates an entire cult of Martian asshole priests, recruits tough-as-hell followers, explores uncharted regions and escapes from impenetrable fortresses armed solely with his wits, grim determination, super jumping ability and tireless sword arm. Oh, and every hot babe he meets falls in love with him.

Holy shit John Carter is awesome. First off, he's doesn't back down from a fight for any reason. He could be completely fucking unarmed and fifteen gorillas could walk up to him and if one of them even so much as looked at him funny he'd flip out and punch all of them to death and pull out their brains. Secondly, his Earth strength makes him a total badass of the first degree on Mars, and he can jack motherfuckers in the mouth and lay them out with one hit like he was Mike Tyson on PCP. Oh, and he's also a fucking platinum-grade swordsman and it just so happens that Mars is a backwards-ass planet where the blade is the weapon of choice. So Carter spends like 80% of his time hacking aliens to pieces and urinating on their corpses while flying around on airships shooting machine guns at panda bears and breaking giant spiders in half with his teeth.

In addition to all this shit that already makes him badass, John Carter has a warrior's code of honor, which is totally respectable. He's not a cold-blooded murderer but rather a hardened soldier who never backs down, never retreats and never loses a battle. I guess when you're as badass as J.C. you don't have to resort to stabbing idiots in their sleep. I'm sure it's much more satisfying to best your enemies in single combat by ramming your sword through their hearts, especially if you've got serious beef with them or if you need to kill them to defend your woman's honor.

I still feel as though I'm not doing the badassitude of this character justice in this article though, so I'm just going to conclude it here. I do suggest that you pick up a copy of A Princess of Mars if you're into cheesy old-school sci-fi, because few of the space heroes who came after have anything on John Carter of Mars.